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Archive for February 16th, 2018

I told you about it here yesterday, but I’ve noticed over the last 24 hours that the story about Trump’s refugee policies being blamed for closure of NON-PROFIT GROUP offices is all over the media.

Let me be clear!

The blame rests squarely on the design of the US Refugee Admissions Program (and Congress) which has shoveled so much federal money to NON-PROFITS that they long ago gave up any idea of seriously attempting to raise private money to TAKE CARE OF THE REFUGEES THEY CLAIM THEY WANTED!

The program has essentially become a ponzi-scheme built on US Treasury payments to NON-PROFIT groups on a refugee per head basis. Refugee (paying client) numbers decline, and thus so does the NON-PROFIT groups’ taxpayer support.

For ten years I have been hammering this point—nothing has stopped NON-PROFIT refugee agencies from raising PRIVATE money in the old fashioned way! They could have held more fundraisers, sought out grants from businesses AND from religious groups to tide them over through the ups and downs of the refugee admissions flow.

(If, at this point, they say there isn’t enough private money for this, then that means the public doesn’t want it!)

So instead they got lazy on the federal dole. It isn’t the Trump State Department’s fault if refugees brought in previous months and years are now left without local support. The State Department can’t legally shutter NON-PROFIT groups.

It is the management at the top of the nine federal contractors (below) who were careless and lazy (all the while collecting exorbitant salaries themselves!) who are to blame if refugees are left in the lurch now, or staff at the lowest levels is dismissed.

Where the h*** is Congress! It is way past time to either dump or completely reform the Refugee Act of 1980!

The nine contractors….

The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees and get them signed up for their services (aka welfare)! From most recent accounting, here.

This is aReuters storyfrom two days ago (just getting to it). Emphasis below is mine:

BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Hungary’s nationalist government introduced legislation that would empower the interior minister to ban non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that support migration and pose a “national security risk”.

The bill, submitted to parliament late on Tuesday, is a key part of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s anti-immigration campaign targeting U.S. financier George Soros whose philanthropy aims to bolster liberal and open-border values in eastern Europe.

The government says the bill, which would also impose a 25 percent tax on foreign donations to NGOs that back migration in Hungary, is meant to deter illegal immigration Orban says is eroding European stability and has been stoked in part by Soros.

Orban vs. Soros

Hungary and Poland are both under nationalist governments that have clashed with the European Union leadership in Brussels over their perceived authoritarian drift deviating from EU standards on democracy and rule of law.

But Orban’s message, championing conservative Christian beliefs and rejecting multiculturalism, has gone down well with Hungarian voters and his Fidesz party is expected to secure a third straight term in a general election due on April 8.

The bill says that NGOs that “sponsor, organize or support the entry or stay of third-country citizens on Hungarian territory via a safe third country to extend international protection … qualify as organizations supporting migration”.

Such activity – including campaigning, advocacy, recruiting volunteers, producing information booklets – would have to be approved by the interior minister, who could deny permission if he saw a “national security risk”.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the Department of Health and Human Services somehow, awhile ago, was tasked with taking care of the Unaccompanied Alien Children entering the US illegally. In fact, their involvement created a huge new money stream to at least two refugee contractors—the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service—which received government grants and contracts to care for the ‘children.’

But, in yet another demonstration of the expanding taxpayer funding to care for illegals, the ORR also has a grant program to provide the ‘children’ with legal services.

Keep in mind, however, that the ‘children’ (mostly teenage boys) are not refugees. Refugees must prove they will be persecuted if returned to their home country. The Central American lawbreakers may be running from crime and poverty, but those are not criteria for receiving asylum (refugee status).

In recent months a controversy has exploded for ORR because some of the illegal alien ‘children’ claim they have a constitutional right to an abortion and ORR is saying, NO! They do not.

You fund the Open Borders industry!

ORR is warning a large legal aid contractor that they could be removed from the federal dole if they instruct the ‘children’ about abortion rights.

A major legal services group for immigrant children told its lawyers nationwide not to discuss abortion access, even if minors in custody ask for help understanding their legal rights, for fear it would jeopardize a multimillion-dollar contract with the Department of Health and Human Services.

The constraints on what government-funded lawyers can say to young detainees was contained in an email from the nonprofit Vera Institute of Justice, which said it acted after a phone call with an HHS employee. Vera’s instruction to lawyers comes as the Trump administration has tried in court to block access to abortion procedures for undocumented teens in federal custody.

“We know for a fact that there is a very real risk to the entire legal services program for children in [Office of Refugee Resettlement] custody if issues other than immigration are addressed in consultations or representation, the abortion issue in particular,”a Vera official cautioned in a Feb. 2 email obtained by The Washington Post.

In an internal e-mail someone forwarded to the WaPo, Mulcahy says that VERA does not want to risk losing the millions of dollars taxpayers give them to represent the Unaccompanied Alien Children.

The government pays $57 million a year under a five-year contract to Vera, which works with 38 organizations in six regions to provide legal help to minors who have crossed the border illegally and without their parents.

In the email, Vera official Anne Marie Mulcahy said she was sending it after a conversation with the government analyst who manages the program within the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) at HHS.

During the call, the employee “directed us to ensure that Vera’s legal services providers are not talking to children in HHS custody about abortion,” wrote Mulcahy, who is the director of Vera’s unaccompanied minors program.

Mulcahy instructed lawyers to immediately strip references to abortion from “Know Your Rights” legal pamphlets and said lawyers could refer children with abortion-related questions to other attorneys.

[….]

The office is responsible for the care of approximately 7,700 minors in custody, nearly 70 percent of whom are boys, according to HHS. The minors are facing possible deportation to countries such as El Salvador and Honduras…..

Below is a screenshot page of a recent Form 990 for VERA, note that the vast majority of their income comes from you—US taxpayers. In order to view the 990, go to ProPublica here and follow links. If you visit their Form 990, don’t miss the salaries page!

You paid VERA lawyers $41.5 million in 2014 to represent the illegal alien children. Obviously VERA could not exist without federal funding!

Immigration is big business in America, not just for the global corporations greedy for cheap labor, but for the extensive industry the federal government runs through its grants and contracts like those to VERA—Institute of Justice.